Wireless Telecommunications

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced that he intends to appoint Donald Stockdale to serve as chief of the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau.

Stockdale is an economist and attorney with extensive FCC and private-sector experience. Stockdale will be working closely with Nese Guendelsberger who, having served as acting bureau chief, will continue to help lead the Bureau as senior deputy bureau chief. Meanwhile, Chairman Pai intends to appoint James Schlichting, who currently serves as senior deputy bureau chief in the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, to the same position in the International Bureau. Stockdale rejoins the Commission from Bates White Economic Consulting where he has been a partner. Prior to that, he worked on telecom regulatory and antitrust issues as a partner at Mayer Brown LLP. Mr. Stockdale first joined the FCC’s then-Common Carrier Bureau (now the Wireline Competition Bureau) in 1994 as an attorney advisor and later as deputy division chief and associate bureau chief for economics. He later served as director of research in the Office of Policy and Planning and finally as deputy bureau chief and chief economist for the Wireline Competition Bureau until he left the agency in 2011. He earned his doctorate in economics and
law degree from Yale University and bachelors degrees from Cambridge University and Yale.

The US Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has awarded $38.5 million to 33 research and development (R&D) projects aimed at advancing broadband communications technologies for first responders. The multiyear grants are intended to help modernize public safety communications and operations by supporting the migration of data, video and voice communications from mobile radio to a nationwide public safety broadband network, as well as accelerating critical technologies related to indoor location tracking and public safety analytics.

The House Communications Subcommittee, chaired by Rep Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), held a hearing examining cybersecurity risks to wireless technologies with a particular focus on wireless networks and mobile devices. Cyber criminals often utilize a number of strategies to launch attacks on wireless technologies. Often times exploiting vulnerabilities within a network to gain unauthorized access to wireless networks or target mobile devices through malware and phishing attacks.

“Mobile connectivity has become essential to our daily lives as a result of advances in technology and consumer demand,” said Chairman Blackburn. “Increasing reliance on wireless devices and networks has provided more avenues for cyber criminals to compromise our security and harm consumers. Hackers are smart and they are adapting. The sophistication and frequency of cyberattacks against mobile devices continues to escalate and we must meet this challenge head on.”

[Commentary] The Supreme Court recently agreed to hear Carpenter v. United States, a case on whether the Fourth Amendment protects historical cell-site records. In this post, I want to focus on a small but potentially important part of the Carpenter litigation: How should an originalist Justice vote in the case?

There are many different flavors of originalism, of course, and originalist arguments often can be used to argue for different outcomes. But in this post I want to discuss one originalist argument that I think is significant. Let’s start with the obvious: The Framers could not have imagined a world of cell-site records. And the original public meaning of the Fourth Amendment is open to a wide range of interpretations at different levels of generality. With that said, the text of the Fourth Amendment does have an important clue about what the Fourth Amendment was originally understood to mean that might be important to the Carpenter case.

[Kerr is the Fred C. Stevenson Research Professor at The George Washington University Law School]

The Federal Communications Commission is currently in the midst of efforts to streamline infrastructure siting requirements for telecommunications companies, having recently undertaken a review of how state and local processes affect the speed and cost of deployments. But FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn hinted the FCC’s plan to step in on the state and local levels and apply one cohesive framework for siting could be hampered by its separate attempts to roll back Title II regulation.

Speaking at the Southeastern Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners conference in Atlanta, Commissioner Clyburn said a reversal of Title II would do more than erase the foundation for net neutrality. It would also undermine the basis for universal service programs and streamlining pole attachment regulations. Without Title II, Commissioner Clyburn noted, broadband providers who do not also provide a cable or legacy voice service will not be able to take advantage of the rights granted to them under section 224 of the Communications Act of 1934. “There is a lot of talk in Washington right now about preempting states and localities in the context of both tower siting and rights-of-way,” Commissioner Clyburn observed. “But they propose to rely on section 253 of the Act to do so. That provision can only be used if the provider is offering a telecommunications service. I am not sure how a 5G deployment with a LTE and VoLTE fallback will qualify as telecommunications service within the meaning of the Act if the majority’s attempt at reclassification goes through.” Commissioner Clyburn indicated she disagreed with the blanket preemption of localities in the management of their rights-of-way, noting that this approach “ignores that some of the most interesting ideas in infrastructure deployment have come out of the states and municipalities.”

This report examines the implications for communities of color of fifth-generation wireless technology (also known as 5G) and Smart City technology. Currently, major mobile network operators, such as AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon, offer the fourth generation of wireless broadband technology (4G). Over the next four years, these companies will start to offer 5G in select cities. 5G will facilitate the growth of Smart City technologies, which are tools that allow cities and counties to manage public services such as transportation and power grids more efficiently.

We can all agree that what we could do with less is the pull and push between federal, state, and local policymakers. We are in need of and should strive for a new era of cooperative regulation, that recognizes the states as laboratories of democracy, and your federal partners as a uniform guide where and when appropriate. So allow me to take some time this morning, to outline areas where we can work together, and other areas I feel, where states and localities should take the lead when it comes to privacy, universal service, pole attachments, rights-of-way access, and inmate calling.

Mobile devices have rapidly become one of the most common ways for Americans to get news, and the sharpest growth in the past year has been among Americans ages 50 and older, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in March. More than eight-in-ten US adults now get news on a mobile device (85%), compared with 72% just a year ago and slightly more than half in 2013 (54%). And the recent surge has come from older people: Roughly two-thirds of Americans ages 65 and older now get news on a mobile device (67%), a 24-percentage-point increase over the past year and about three times the share of four years ago, when less than a quarter of those 65 and older got news on mobile (22%).

The strong growth carries through to those in the next-highest age bracket. Among 50- to 64-year-olds, 79% now get news on mobile, nearly double the share in 2013. The growth rate was much less steep – or nonexistent – for those younger than 50.

[Commentary] Ask the usual suspects when the first 3.5 GHz smartphones are expected to hit the market and things get eerily quiet. A projected timeline from the CBRS Alliance showed the organization expects at least one handset to be approved by December 2017. But an alliance spokesperson also noted that such timelines are subject to change. Apparently, Verizon asked Apple for 3.5 GHz CBRS support in the next iPhone. When questioned on the topic, Verizon declined to comment on that or when it expects any handset, iOS or Android, to support 3.5 GHz. Neither Apple nor Samsung chose to comment, although ZTE told FierceWirelessTech that it does not have plans to introduce a phone with the 3.5 GHz CBRS band this year. However, carriers have shown interest in this band in 2018, and ZTE will be working with them on their requirements, according to a company statement. Of course, Qualcomm has announced 3.5 GHz support in the U.S. in the Snapdragon X20 modem. However, it’s not commenting on carrier or OEM roadmaps. Why so much mystery about when handsets are going to support this band when everybody is so excited about the opportunities the 3.5 GHz CBRS band promises?

For over a century, assessments of competition or the lack thereof have been central to how public policy treats the telecommunications industry. This centrality continues today. Yet, numerous foundational questions about this concept persist. In this paper, we chronicle how the definition of “competition” has evolved in economics and has been applied in the communications arena. The academic literature on competition hits an important inflection point in the mid-20th century with the development of “workable competition”: a term that is equated to “effective competition.” We find that while the concept of “effective competition” is central to policy formation at the Federal Communications Commission, the FCC’s own applications of “effective competition” are inconsistent. Given the centrality of this concept, and its inconsistent applications to date, we draw upon the seminal contributions to the development of the notion of “effective competition” to offer a modern definition suitable for application in 21st century communications markets.